| Victims pin hopes on Hatoyama | ||
Six frail-looking, diminutive women in their 80s sit quietly in a row, surrounded by dozens of nuns and volunteers urging a government to face up to the wrongdoings of the past. Since 1992, the elderly victims of Japan's wartime ferocities have taken part in the weekly demonstrations every Wednesday at noon, rain or snow, outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Last week, at the 885th gathering, the grandmothers hobbled across the road, hand in hand, to deliver a letter to the security booth of the embassy because no one from the embassy would come out and take it. The two-page letter was addressed to Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who is scheduled to visit Seoul this Friday for a summit with President Lee Myung-bak. The former "comfort women," who were forced to provide sex to the Japanese army during World War II, want the Japanese government to apologize through a Diet resolution, legally compensate them and include details of their suffering in history textbooks. They also want the Korean government to take the lead in resolving the issue. "It's a miracle that we are still alive," said Gil Won-ok, 82, who had her uterus removed at the age of 15 as a result of sexual slavery for the Japanese army in northern China. Like most victims, she found herself in a "comfort station" after being approached with the promise of factory work in her early teens. "This problem should be cleared before we all die, so that we don't get in the way of the younger generation, who should share peace and prosperity," she said. International awareness of the comfort women issue has grown after some of the surviving victims began to speak up in the early 1990s, but Tokyo has not done more than an apologetic statement by a prime minister in 1995. Having suffered a lifetime of shame, sickness, poverty and neglect, the women saw the recent change of government in Japan as a silver lining. During his meeting with President Lee in New York last month, Hatoyama said he has "the courage to face up to history" and offered to build new Japan-Korea relations based on a shared perception of history. In 2000, Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan and two other opposition parties had pushed for a legislation to work out the issue of wartime sexual slavery victims, which was trashed with opposition from the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The DPJ appear to have taken a step back, however, dropping the legislation plan from its list of campaign pledges, merely saying it will set up a research bureau within the National Diet Library. "We are hoping Hatoyama would be more proactive compared to the LDP about solving problems from the past," said Kang Joo-hye, a senior member of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. "We will continue to demand an official apology through a resolution of the Japanese Diet, not an individual's statement, and legal compensation for the crimes they committed." In 1995, a private fund was set up to compensate the sex slaves, but many women refused to accept any money because they saw the fund's nongovernmental nature as a way for Tokyo to avoid taking direct responsibility. Lee Yong-soo, 81, had met Hatoyama, then secretary general of the Democratic Party, in 1998 through a civic group and told him that she and other victims could not accept private funds without an official apology from Tokyo. "He said he was giving the issue a lot of thought and promised to make earnest efforts," said Lee. "He seemed truthful and warm-hearted. We expect him to make an important decision." Lee was one of the plaintiffs who filed a suit against the Japanese government in 2006 to demand full disclosure of the treaty signed with Korea in 1965, which, according to Tokyo, nullifies all Korean claims for damages. Japan disclosed in 2007 and 2008 some 60,000 pages of diplomatic documents that recorded the proceedings of the treaty, with major parts crossed out. "We hope the Hatoyama administration decides to fully disclose the documents within this year," said Lee who studied international law at Kyungpook National University to fight against Tokyo. "We wish we could meet him during his visit to Seoul." Historians estimate that the Japanese government coerced nearly 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, into sexual slavery at army bases in Asia before and during World War II. None of those responsible for overseeing the sexual slavery has been punished. (sophie@heraldm.com)
By Kim So-hyun
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